Continuity in social cognition from infancy to childhood

Research examining the development of social cognition has largely been divided into two areas: infant perception of intentional agents, and preschoolers’ understanding of others’ mental states and beliefs (theory of mind). Many researchers have suggested that there is continuity in social cognitive development such that the abilities observed in infancy are related to later preschool ability, yet little empirical evidence exists for this claim. Here, we present preliminary evidence that capacities specific to the social domain contribute to performance in social cognition tasks both during infancy and in early childhood. Specifically, looking time patterns in an infant social cognition task correlated with preschool theory of mind; however, no such relationship was found for infants in a nonsocial cognition task.     

Renewing the senses: conversion experience and the phenomenology of the spiritual life

In his discussion of conversion experience, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James draws attention to a variety of experience which has not been much investigated in the philosophy of religion literature, but which seems to be of some importance religiously??namely, an experience which consists in a re-vivification of the sensory world as a whole. In this paper, I develop four accounts of the nature of this kind of experience, and I show how the experience can inform our conception of the spiritual life, considered as a world-directed mode of experience and practice.     

Anti-equality: Social comparison in young children

Young children dislike getting less than others, which might suggest a general preference for equal outcomes. However, young children are typically not averse to others receiving less than themselves. These results are consistent with two alternatives: young children might not have any preferences about others receiving less than themselves, or they might have preferences for others receiving less than themselves. We test these alternatives with 5- to 10-year-old children. We replicate previous findings that children will take a cost to avoid being at a relative disadvantage, but also find that 5- and 6-year-olds will spitefully take a cost to ensure that another’s welfare falls below their own. This result suggests that the development of fairness includes overcoming an initial social comparison preference for others to get less relative to oneself.     

Individuation of Actions from Continuous Motion

Three studies explored how infants parse a stream of motion into distinct actions. Results show that infants (a) can perceptually discriminate different actions performed by a puppet and (b) can individuate and enumerate heterogeneous sequences of such actions (e.g., jump-fall-jump) when the actions are separated by brief motionless pauses, but (c) are not able to individuate such actions when embedded within a continuous stream of motion. Combined with previous research showing that infants can individuate homogeneous actions from an ongoing stream of motion, these findings suggest that infants can use repeating patterns of motion in the perceptual input to define action boundaries. Results have implications as well for infants' conceptual structure for actions.     

Genomic Testing: a Genetic Counselor’s Personal Reflection on Three Years of Consenting and Testing

Whole exome sequencing (WES) is increasingly used in research and clinical genetics as the cost of sequencing decreases and the interpretation improves. Genetic counselors need to be prepared to counsel a diverse patient population for this complex test. This commentary is a reflection of one genetic counselor’s experiences in counseling, consenting, and returning results for clinical and research WES for over 120 participants and patients. She reflects on how she overcame the initial challenges and concerns of counseling for WES and how her counseling evolved from a teaching based counseling model to an interactive patient-center counseling model. Her insights are offered to prepare other genetic counselors for the growing use of genomic testing.     

The Embodied Chiasmic Relationship of Mother and Infant

In this paper the very earliest relationship of mother and newborn will be described phenomenologically through an interlacing of Donald Winnicott's work on maternal holding with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts of flesh and chiasm. Merleau-Ponty's thinking suggests that the holding relationship described by Winnicott is formed as much by the infant's holding of the mother as it is by mother's holding of her infant. Both flex and bend towards each other and inscribe each other yet retain their own particularity. Further specification and articulation of the lived body of both arises from the ongoing overlapping and sedimenting of past and current touches, movements, sounds, and sightings initiated internally and externally. Examples drawn from fieldwork and secondary sources will illustrate this ongoing embodied relationship.